ARTICLES

“Generalized or Parochial Altruism? Evidence from a Nationwide Lost-Letter Experiment”, under review.

ABSTRACT: What explains variation in levels of prosocial behavior across communities? And what is the relationship between ingroup and outgroup prosociality? According to theories of generalized altruism, market integration …

“Foreigners in hostile hinterlands: Local exposure to refugees and right-wing support in Eastern Germany after the refugee crisis” (with M. Schaub and J. Gereke)

ABSTRACT: How does first-time, local exposure to foreigners influence attitudes towards them and support for right-wing parties? The article exploits the quasi-random allocation of refugees to Eastern German municipalities, …

ABSTRACT: Several scholars have concluded that ethnic diversity has negative consequences for social trust. However, recent research has called into question whether ethnic diversity per se has detrimental effects …

ABSTRACT: How do Americans understand politics? This paper argues that party polarization and the growing prominence of moral issues in recent decades have catalyzed different responses by different groups of Americans. ...

2013 “The Effect of Group Attachment and Social Position on Prosocial Behavior. Evidence from Lab-in-the-Field Experiments,” PLoS ONE, 8(3), (with G. Grossman).

ABSTRACT: Social life is regulated by norms of fairness that constraint selfish behavior. While a large scholarship on prosocial behavior has provided evidence of such norms of fairness, large inter- and intra-personal variations in prosocial behavior still need to be explained. ...

ABSTRACT: Social sanctioning is widely considered a successful strategy to promote cooperation among humans. In situations in which individual and collective interests are at odds, incentives to free-ride induce individuals to refrain from contributing to public goods provision. ...

Outstanding Article Award from the Collective Behavior and Social Movements section of the ASA.

Honorable mention for the Clifford Geertz Prize from the Cultural Sociology section of the ASA.

ABSTRACT: Social scientists describe culture as either coherent or incoherent and political dissent as either unifying or divisive. This article moves beyond such dichotomies. Content, historical, and network analyses of public debates on how to organize four lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Washington marches provide evidence for an integrative position. ...

ABSTRACT: Associational life may foster political integration or amplify division, depending on how individuals partition themselves into groups and whether their multiple affiliations embed them into concentric or cross-cutting social circles. ...

ABSTRACT: This article analyzes integrative dynamics within civil society by looking at civic networks—the web of collaborative ties between participatory associations acting on behalf of public and collective interests. ...

Outstanding Article Award from the Mathematical Sociology section of the ASA.

ABSTRACT: This article accounts for two puzzling paradoxes. The first paradox is the simultaneous absence and presence of attitude polarization—the fact that global attitude polarization is relatively rare, even though pundits describe it as common. ...

ABSTRACT: Within a framework of reasoning voters who use various cognitive shortcuts –heuristics– to arrive at decision, we classify Italian voters on the basis of the information they possess, how information and judgment are organized and whether preferences match actual vote. ...